Communication Failure

by Zieja, Joe

  “Let’s see,” Rogers said, looking around the room. “Who else are we missing?” He thought for a moment. “Who usually comes to staff meetings, anyway?”

  “No one,” Belgrave said. “Don’t you see what the war room looks like?”

  Rogers cleared his throat. “I sort of feel like we should have someone from Personnel here, maybe. And who’s in charge of flight operations?”

  “That,” came a voice from the door, “would be this guy.”

  In the doorway of the war room stood a man pointing at himself with both thumbs. Rogers might have said he was handsome, but he genuinely couldn’t tell. The shit-eating grin and giant sunglasses blocked most of his facial features. Tall and a little lanky, he stood in a way that made it clear that he knew he was tall and lanky and was trying hard not to believe it. He also appeared to be wearing pajamas, but that was an illusion. It was really just a flight suit.

  Rogers knew who it was immediately.

  “You must be Flash,” he said.

  “You got it, baby,” the pilot responded.

  Rogers frowned at him. “Is ‘baby’ how they say ‘sir’ on the flight deck?”

  It wasn’t that Rogers wanted to be called sir. He wasn’t much for military protocol; in fact, the only military protocol he liked was a drinking game called Military Protocol that had absolutely nothing to do with military protocol. He hated being called sir. But he hated being called baby more.

  “Whoa,” Flash said. “Don’t heat up the Chillster.” He made a fanning motion with both hands. “Check your six.”

  Rogers checked his rank instead. “A lieutenant lieutenant is in charge of all the flight operations on this ship?” he asked. Then again, Rogers had been an ex-sergeant just a short time ago, so he supposed it was a little hypocritical to look down on the man because of his rank.

  Commander Belgrave spoke up. “What happened to Commander Ortiz?”

  Flash looked genuinely confused for a moment. “Who is that?”

  “The flight ops chief.”

  “Oh!” Flash said, nodding. “You mean Oobles.” He laughed. “I totally had a bogey dope on his name. Yeah, he flew into an asteroid.”

  “I am going to put a kill order on all the local asteroids,” Rogers said, then paused. “For the record, someone actually saw him fly into the asteroid, right? This isn’t like a robots-took-over-his-ship kind of asteroid accident, is it?”

  A similar report had been released about the Rancor, a patrol ship that, as it turned out, had been a test run for the droids to take over a ship. They still hadn’t found it.

  “A-firm,” Flash said.

  Everyone remained silent.

  “A firm what?” Rogers asked. “A firm . . . confidence that he is, in fact, dead?”

  “A-firm as in affirmative, baby,” Flash said, shaking his head. “Try to keep up; I’m always at full burn.”

  Rogers sighed. So instead of anyone with command experience, he had this junior officer in charge of all the flying operations on the ship. Hadn’t there been anyone higher-ranking, or at least less ridiculous, who could have taken over?

  Regardless, this was not the time to argue over personnel decisions. And speaking of Personnel, nobody had come representing them or Communications. The comm shop probably had their hands full trying to un-fry their systems and couldn’t contribute much anyway, and he wasn’t even really sure what Personnel did. He supposed it was time to kick this off.

  “Oh,” he said out loud. “One more person we forgot. Do we have a new intel chief ? Preferably one who isn’t a Thelicosan spy this time?”

  That had been Rogers’ fault for suggesting the now-deceased McSchmidt for the position, but nobody seemed to want to rub that in his face for the moment.

  “I nur a purfuct person fur dee job!”

  “Tunger!” Rogers said. “For the last time, take those rocks out of your mouth. What are you doing here?”

  Tunger pouted as he reached into his cheeks and actually pulled out a pair of rocks, something Rogers hadn’t seen him do before. Corporal Tunger used to be Rogers’ orderly, until Rogers reassigned him to the zoo deck where he belonged. He’d been perfecting his “Thelicosan accent” in hopes of being a spy, but to Rogers’ ears it had always been just annoying.

  “Can I be a spy now?” Tunger asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Rogers said.

  “Oh come on!” Tunger said. “McSchmidt is space dust. You can promote me to lieutenant lieutenant and—”

  “No,” Rogers said. “You belong on the zoo deck.”

  Rogers didn’t say it as an insult. The man really had a gift for taking care of animals. He just didn’t have a gift for much else.

  “Oh, you cats are looking for an intel geek?” Flash snorted. “You don’t need one of those nerds gumming up your brains with all their smart talk. I can do that job.”

  “Based on my limited knowledge of human personality types and career requirements,” Deet said, “I strongly advise against appointing this person as your intelligence officer due to the likelihood of him getting everyone killed.”

  “Whoa, did not copy,” Flash said. “Send that again? Did this nerd-a-tron just call me stupid?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Rogers said. “Now can we—”

  “Did that stupid [MATERNAL FORNICATION] human just call me a nerd-a-tron?” Deet asked.

  “I wurnt to be a spy!”

  “I want to shoot something,” the Viking said.

  “I want . . . what do I want?” Deet repined. “Can droids have wants? Is it just a program telling me what to do?”

  “Everyone shut up!” Rogers roared.

  To his surprise, everyone did shut up. He was so surprised, in fact, that when everyone else shut up, he also shut up. After a moment, he could not figure out how to stop shutting up. What had they even been talking about?

  Finally a decrepit wall decoration fell to the floor, snapping him out of it.

  “Tunger,” Rogers said finally. “You don’t even have the beginnings of the qualifications for an intelligence officer, never mind the chief of the intel squadron. I’m sorry. If we weren’t facing imminent destruction and all that, I might allow it for entertainment purposes, but right now we can’t afford to do something so stu . . . have the zoo deck left in any less capable hands than yours.”

  Tunger looked disheartened, but Rogers didn’t have time to heal his wounded pride right now. From what he understood of his personnel situation—hey, there was something the Personnel chief could have helped him with—the intel squadron had been mostly composed of droids. He wasn’t sure there was even anyone left on the Flagship he could promote into the position. The pilot wonder boy Flash might have had enough ego to fill a professional sports locker room, but at least he had some flight experience.

  “Fine,” Rogers said. “Flash, you’re our stand-in for today. And since you were kind enough to submit that enlightening report on the status of forces, maybe you can start this off by giving us a summary.”

  Flash snapped his fingers and pointed at Rogers. “Roger that,” he said. “You got it, boss.” He raised his hands. “So I came out of the launch hangar like this—”

  “No,” Rogers said. “No hand gestures.”

  Flash looked at him, his grin dropping for the first time since he’d walked into the room. If Rogers could have seen his eyes behind those giant sunglasses, he would have guessed they were wide with shock.

  “How am I supposed to tell stories about how awesome I am?”

  “You’re not. I want you to tell me what the Thelicosans are doing out there.”

  “Man, this scores like a ten on the lame-o-meter. Fine. Can Nerd Bot here pull up, like, a space map or something?”

  “I’ll pull up an [EXPLETIVE].”

  “I don’t know what that is, man.”

  Deet made a couple of annoyed beeping noises but projected a spherical depiction of the battlespace above the table. Their sensor network was restricted to what t
he Flagship had organically, since any signals coming back from their network of observation platforms were being jammed by the Thelicosans. Combined with what they could literally see out the windows, this orange-hued projection was the best guess for what the hell was going on out there. It was an awful lot of metal with an awful lot of weapons.

  In short, it looked pretty awful.

  “That’s a lot of ships,” Sergeant Mailn said.

  “No shit,” the Viking said.

  Deet’s head craned upward. “I can’t even see what’s coming out of myself. Is it a girl? I hope it’s a girl.”

  “Everyone give Flash here your attention,” Rogers said.

  “Alright,” Flash said. “These things here,” he went on, pointing to where there appeared to be a cluster of Battle Spiders, “these are pretty cool. They’re all pointy and stuff, but I wouldn’t want to take my Ravager near it without some serious support. But I think the guys working them are drunk, or really bad, because they shot all their weapons off into empty space.”

  “It’s called a warning shot,” the Viking growled.

  “Well, we call it a miss,” Flash said. “And then we make fun of you for it. So anyway, like I said, these are cool, but they’re not doing anything dangerous because they suck at shooting. All their fighters—at least I think they were fighters—ran away when they saw us. I was totally ready to, like, come in like this.” He raised a hand.

  “No,” Rogers said.

  “Man, you are such a buzzkill. Anyway, when you see the 331st Raging Ravagers come up on your six like we did, well, I don’t blame them for turning tail and getting back to their big ship.”

  So that was what he’d meant over the radio when he’d said they were running away. But why would they do that? None of this made any sense. Why fire a warning shot? Why not talk to them at all, aside from a cryptic invasion message? And why run away when the Ravagers came toward them? If this was an act of war, they could have at least put some effort into it.

  “Okay,” Rogers said. “Anything else?”

  “Not if I can’t use my friggin’ hands,” Flash said, pouting.

  “Nothing else, then,” Rogers said. He leaned back in his chair and looked around the room. “We can’t stay like this forever,” he said. “Hart, how are we doing on supplies?”

  Hart, who was also intimately involved with logistics, shrugged. “We’re designed to be out here for long periods of time without resupply, but with the droid problem and someone setting all the kitchens on fire, it’s not as easy.”

  Hart sent a glare toward the Viking, who, unaccustomed to being glared at, made a move to flip the table.

  “Easy!” Rogers said.

  “I set those mess halls on fire for a reason,” the Viking said, thankfully not following through on destroying the last remnants of a serviceable meeting table. “You know, because there were droves of droids trying to kill us at that time. Next time I’ll send them a nice letter to please shut down their secret network.”

  “Not going to matter much if we starve,” Hart said.

  “Nobody is going to starve,” Rogers said above their argument. “We might have lost some supplies and some ability to do work, but we’re not helpless. We can send shuttles to some of the other ships and ask them to give us some of their surplus. The real problem is the size of our force. If the Thelicosans wanted to, they could turn us to space dust pretty quickly. We need to break the communications blockade so we can get word back to headquarters.”

  Rogers wasn’t exactly into self-sacrifice, or anything dramatic like that, but he hated to think what would happen if the Thelicosans made their way through the 331st without the 331st doing their job as a buffer unit. Sending Merida warning of an invading force might be more important than saving all their skins.

  “Oh, is that it?” Flash said. “That’s a piece of cake, Skipper. We just blow up their jammers.”

  Rogers looked at the pilot, his brow furrowing. For some reason, he felt like blowing things up wasn’t the solution.

  “How?”

  “You sic me and a couple of Ravagers on these platforms here,” Flash said. He pointed to a couple of similarly shaped devices on the display. They looked a little bit like someone had taken a silverware drawer, stuck all the contents into a black piece of putty, and then thrown it into space. “We splash ’em, and then you start the beeps and squeaks back to headquarters.”

  “What’s he saying?” Rogers heard Tunger whisper.

  “He’s saying we shoot back,” the Viking said. “I think it’s a stupid idea. You start blowing up pieces of their equipment, and you just rile them up and give them time to get ready. You want to do this, you go in hard, you go to their flagship, and you take a bucket of marines.” She folded her arms. “We’ll do the whole job. You’re talking about clipping the lion’s fingernails.”

  “What did the lion ever do to you?” Tunger said, genuinely defensive.

  “We’re not going to do anything to any lions,” Rogers said. “Hart, how are the Ravager maintenance crews doing?”

  “They’re overworked and underpaid. Don’t you remember being an engineer, or have you got too much brass on your shoulders now?”

  “Wait,” the Viking said. “You’re actually doing this? A couple of days ago you were ready to take the whole fleet and run away. Now you’re saying instead of actually fighting, you’re going to throw some pajama-wearing goon and his cool hairdo pals at some pieces of equipment that you’re not even sure what they are?”

  “I told you they’re jammer thingies,” Flash said. “You don’t need an intel nerd to tell you that. What crawled up your ass, dude?”

  “It’s a little better than going in and killing people,” Rogers said to the Viking. “It’s clearly defensive. If they’re just jamming relays, they’re not manned.”

  “Bull!” she said, getting up out of her seat and completely blotting out the holographic display. “They shot first, shit-for-brains. They’ve already started the war. It’s time we finish it!”

  The room descended into silence for a moment as the two arguments lingered in the air. Deet, still lying back on the table so that he could project the battlespace upward, tapped his thin metallic fingers on his chest impatiently. Rogers darted his eyes furtively around the room, looking for any guidance, any sign that maybe he had another option. Or, at the very least, which of the two options in front of him would be better.

  If he went with Flash’s plan, they would undoubtedly be able to get a message back to headquarters before they were slaughtered. The Viking’s plan, on the other hand, would have absolutely no real benefit except for the marines getting to go out in a blaze of glory. But it might help him score points with the most beautiful woman in the world.

  As much as he wanted to impress the Viking, it wouldn’t be much good if she threw herself into a Thelicosan disruptor rifle.

  “Alright, Flash,” Rogers said. “Let’s do it your way.”

  The Viking did flip the table then.

  The Jammer Thingies

  “I really don’t think this is the sort of thing we should be doing right now,” Rogers said.

  Mailn punched him in the chest without moving any other part of her body, sending him staggering backward. How did such a small woman have so much power?

  They were in one of the marines’ training facilities on the training deck. Thankfully they were alone. Rogers couldn’t really handle having anyone else under his command watching him get his ass handed to him by someone who could have doubled for a high school cheerleader.

  “I think this is something we should have done weeks ago,” Mailn said. “Do you really think we can afford to simply not have a fleet commander every couple of days because he gets punched in the face? You need to start exercising some leadership. And in order to exercise leadership, you need to exercise some exercise.” She tapped him in the gut with a couple of pseudo-punches, each of which echoed with a resounding slap. Ever since the kitchens had c
ome back online, Rogers had been a bit liberal with the desserts.

  “Ha-ha,” he said, coughing. “Very funny. I’m saying maybe this can wait until after the operation goes down. The last message I got from Flash told me they were almost ready. And also that they were ‘totally sweet.’ ”

  Mailn launched a series of kicks, all of which landed firmly on Rogers’ shoulder. He grunted and staggered sideways.

  “And that’s exactly why you need to do this right now. Were you even paying attention to the Viking after that meeting in the war room?”

  Aside from finally flipping the table, officially ruining the only place they had to plan war meetings, the Viking had picked up Deet by his legs and used him as a cudgel to smash the excellently constructed blanket fort. That had, possibly, been the biggest casualty of the Thelicosan invasion so far.

  After that, the Viking had stormed about the ship, roaring incoherently. She’d finally disappeared into her room on the command deck. That wasn’t normally where marines were berthed, but Rogers had moved her room closer to his. He was now rethinking the wisdom of that decision.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe this is the right time to be doing this sort of thing.”

  “Exactly,” Mailn said, hitting him in the side of the head. “Every time the Viking punches you in the face, we lose our commander for a few days. You can’t operate a fleet like that.”

  Rogers frowned. How had they operated the fleet for the few days he’d been unconscious? Then again, they’d operated the fleet with Admiral Klein as their commander for years, and that wasn’t very far off from having a comatose skipper. Even then, Rogers hadn’t woken up with a pile of decisions to make, either. Who had been calling the shots while he’d been out? He’d make a point to ask Belgrave about it later.

  His contemplations were interrupted by his being bowled backward by a flying dragon kick to the chest.